Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online is an action, adventure, comedy, drama, romance, romantic comedy, isekai, science fiction, MMORPG, harem anime series based on a light novel series written by Reki Kawahara, illustrated by abec, and published in the magazine Dengeki Bunko. It started on April 10, 2009, and is still ongoing today, with 20 volumes in total so far. The series has gotten many manga adaptations or spinoffs. The first season of the anime was directed by Tomohiko Ito, musically composed by Yuki Kajura, and produced by Kazuma Miki, Shinichiro Kashiwada, and Studio A-1 Pictures. It originally aired from July 7, 2012 to December 22, 2012 for 25 episodes in total. The second season originally aired from July 5, 2014 to December 20, 2014, for 24 episodes in total. Plot In 2022, a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online (SAO) is released. With the NerveGear, a helmet that stimulates the user's five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds. Both the game and the NerveGear was created by Akihiko Kayaba. On November 6, 10,000 players log into the SAO's mainframe cyberspace for the first time, only to discover that they are unable to log out. Kayaba appears and tells the players that they must beat all 100 floors of Aincrad, a steel castle which is the setting of SAO, if they wish to be free. Those who suffer in-game deaths or forcibly remove the NerveGear out-of-game will suffer real-life deaths. One of the players, named Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya, is one of 1,000 testers in the game's previous closed beta. With the advantage of previous VR gaming experience and a drive to protect other beta testers from discrimination, he isolates himself from the greater groups and plays the game alone, bearing the mantle of "beater", a portmanteau of "beta tester" and "cheater". As the players progress through the game Kirito eventually befriends a young girl named Asuna Yuuki, forming a relationship with and later marrying her in-game. After the duo discover the identity of Kayaba's secret ID, who was playing as the leader of the guild Asuna joined in, they confront and destroy him, freeing themselves and the other players from the game. In the real world, Kazuto discovers that 300 SAO players, including Asuna, remain trapped in their NerveGear. As he goes to the hospital to see Asuna, he meets Shouzou Yuuki, Asuna's father, who is asked by an associate of his, Nobuyuki Sugou, to make a decision, which Sugou later reveals to be his marriage with Asuna, angering Kazuto. Several months later, he is informed by Agil, another SAO survivor, that a figure similar to Asuna was spotted on "The World Tree" in another VRMMORPG cyberspace called Alfheim Online (ALO). Assisted in-game by his cousin Suguha "Leafa" Kirigaya and Yui, a navigation pixie (originally an AI from SAO), he quickly learns that the trapped players in ALO are part of a plan conceived by Sugou to perform illegal experiments on their minds. The goal is to create the perfect mind-control for financial gain and to subjugate Asuna, whom he intends to marry in the real world, to assume control of her family's corporation. Kirito eventually stops the experiment and rescues the remaining 300 SAO players, foiling Sugou's plans. Before leaving ALO to see Asuna, Kayaba, who has uploaded his mind to the Internet using an experimental and destructively high-power version of NerveGear at the cost of his life, entrusts Kirito with The Seed – a package program designed to create virtual worlds. Kazuto eventually reunites with Asuna in the real world and The Seed is released onto the Internet, reviving Aincrad as other VRMMORPGs begin to thrive. Soon after, at the prompting of a government official investigating strange occurrences in VR, Kazuto takes on a job to investigate a series of murders involving another VRMMORPG called Gun Gale Online (GGO), the AmuSphere (the successor of the NerveGear), and a player called Death Gun. Aided by a female player named Shino "Sinon" Asada, he participates in a gunfight tournament called the Bullet of Bullets (BoB) and discovers the truth behind the murders, which originated with a player who participated in a player-killing guild in SAO. Through his and Sinon's efforts, two suspects are captured, though the third suspect, Johnny Black, escapes. Kazuto is later recruited to assist in testing an experimental FullDive machine, Soul Translator (STL), which has an interface that is far more realistic and complex than the previous machine he had played to help develop an artificial intelligence for the Ministry of Defense (MOD) named A.L.I.C.E. He tests the STL by entering a virtual reality cyberspace created with The Seed package, named UnderWorld (UW). In the UW, the flow of time proceeds a thousand times faster than in the real world, and Kirito's memories of what happens inside are restricted. However, Black injures Kazuto with suxamethonium chloride. The MOD recovers Kazuto and places him back into the STL to preserve his mind while attempts are made to save him. Anime Movies #Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale Manga #Sword Art Online #Sword Art Online: Aincrad #Sword Art Online: Fairy Dance #Sword Art Online: Girls Ops #Sword Art Online: Progressive #Sword Art Online: Phantom Bullet #Sword Art Online: Calibur #Sword Art Online: Mother's Rosario #Sword Art Online: Project Alicization Light Novels #Sword Art Online #Sword Art Online: Progressive #Sword Art Online Alternative: Clover's Regret Video Games #Sword Art Online: End World #Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment #Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment #Sword Art Online: Code Register #Sword Art Online: Progress Link #Sword Art Online: Lost Song #Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization #Sword Art Online: Memory Defrag #Accel World VS Sword Art Online: Millennium Twilight #Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet Good Qualities #Good voice acting in both sub and dub. #Incredible soundtrack by Yuki Kajura, one of the best composers in the anime industry. #Despite none of the characters being complex or interesting, most of them are still fun to watch. #Despite Kirito having a harem, he does have a romance in the series, that of Asuna, which is unusual for harem anime. #Amazing animation quality, especially during the fight scenes. #Phenomenal fight scenes. The animation, music, and fast pacing of the fights helps to make them a spectical to the eyes. #Great character designs for the female characters. The absolute best female design is that of Asuna Yuki. Also, Yui would be a close second. #Awesome concept. While getting trapped in an MMORPG wasn't exactly a new idea in anime as of 2012, as shows before it like .hack have done it, it did seem to make it popular. #With its premise, Sword Art Online attempts to use it to tell a story of PTSD. While some argue that they didn't do very well with that, it still doesn't change the fact that it's a great idea. #Sword Art Online allegedly takes place int he same universe as Accel World, another story created by the same author, Reki Kawahara. In fact, it's theorized by fans that the main girl in that series, Kuroyukihime, may be the daughter of Kirito and Asuna, and that Kirito may have had a hand in developing the advanced technology that gamers use in Accel World, due to the fact that it's very similar to something he said that he wanted to create. #The design of the worlds of Sword Art Online, Alfheim Online, and Gun Gale Online are incredibly unique and good to look at. #For the most part, Death Gun is one the better villains in the series. #Sinon is one of the better female characters in the series. #Also, Yuuki is another really good female character. #While Kirito's and Asuna's relationship isn't exaclty the most realistic or fleshed out, it's still nevertheless enjoyable, endearing, and even adorable at times. You truly feel that they love each other and love to see them spending time together. Bad Qualities #Kirito is an awful main character. Even lots of people who enjoy the show tend to single Kiriot out as a boring, shallow, uninteresting, overpowered Gary-Stu. #All of the girls in the show tend to be in love with Kirito for no dicernable reason, a typical trend in lazy harem anime. #The show has lots of pacing issues. #The worst part of the pacing are the random time skips, which happen out of nowhere, and tend to skip past lots of stuff that viewers would probably be interested in seeing. #The series strugglers to achieve and maintain the level of gravitas that life-or-death danger should have. #SAO seems unwilling to commit to Kirito's "lone wolf" persona. #Aside from the female characters, the character designs aren't very good or unique. #Terrible villain for the end of season 1. He was a shallow, unlikable, rapist-villain with zero redeeming qualities whatsoever. #Most of the female characters are poorly handled character wise. They exist solely to be in love with Kirito, and nothing else. The one exception to this is, of coruse, Asuna. #Even Asuna, despite being a relatively strong female character early on in season 1, was reduced to a damsil in distress during the second half. Thankfully, she was the main focus of the final arc of season 2, and went back to being a strong female character then. #The creator of the Sword Art Online game, Akihito Kayaba, wans't very good. His motives were incredibly confusing, sloppy, and not very well thought out. #Despite Death Gun being a pretty cool villain for most of the show it's squandered later on because they turned him into yet another one dimensional rapist-type villain. #Also, Death Gun is just a terrible name. #Sword Art Online is notorious for having really terrible MMORPG games, which is what causes a lot of people who play MMORPG's reguarly to hate the show. #The absolute worst part of Kirito's harem is Suguha Kirigaya, known as Leafa in Alfheim Online, and Kirito's cousin, putting ackward incestrous themes in the series. Reception According to Oricon, Sword Art Online was the top selling light novel series of 2012, with eight volumes figuring among the top selling light novels.[127][128] It was ranked first in the 2012 and 2013 Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! rankings, as well as top ten placement in 2011, 2014 and 2015.[129][130][131][132][133] It was also the second best selling light novel series for the first half of 2016 in Japan, selling 489,374 copies.[134] Sword Art Online: Progressive sold 321,535 copies in the same time period.[134] As of 2017, the series has an estimated 20 million copies in print worldwide.[135] Richard Eisenbeis of Kotaku hails Sword Art Online as the smartest series in recent years, praising its deep insight on the psychological aspects of virtual reality on the human psyche, its sociological views on creating a realistic economy and society in a massively multiplayer online game setting, and the writing staff's ability to juggle a wide variety of genres within the series.[136] Eisenbeis particularly noted how the romance between Kirito and Asuna is explored bringing "definition to exactly what love is like in a virtual world."[136] However, at the time of this preliminary review, he had only watched the first 12 episodes of the series.[136] He has since gone on to review the second half of the series, lauding its excellent use of plot twists and praising its well written and believable villain. However, he felt that some of the initial positive aspects of the series were lost in the second half, such as the focus on psychological repercussions and social interactions that could be realistically seen in an online game. Criticism was also levied on the aspect of turning Asuna into a damsel in distress, stating that a female lead as strong as her was "reduced to nothing but the quest item the male lead is hunting for." Eisenbeis closes his review of the series by stating in regards to the two halves, "Both, however, are enjoyable for what they are."[137] Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network has criticized the series as having pacing problems, logical gaps, and "sloppy writing".[138] Theron Martin of Anime News Networkcriticized the story as struggling "to achieve and maintain the level of gravitas that life-or-death danger should have", while calling it unwilling to commit to Kirito's "lone wolf" image.[139] DeviceCritique explains that Sword Art Online influences the virtual reality market to grow, and references the Oculus Rift as a prime example of the starting point of virtual reality. It also praises Sword Art Online for exploring the psychological and social aspects of virtual reality gaming.[140] Adam Facey of The Muse criticized the series, among others, as being sexist and the female characters as being overly sexualized. 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